Men Take More Risks When Pretty Women Are Around

Being around a pretty woman can make men take more risks, a
new study finds.

Researchers looked at the risk-taking behaviors of 96 young
adult men, with an average age of nearly 22, by asking them to do both easy and
difficult tricks on skateboards.

First, the young men performed the tricks in front of
another man, then in front of a young, attractive female. (The attractiveness
of the woman was independently assessed by 20 male raters.)

The testosterone
levels of the skateboarders were measured after each trick. Testosterone is a
male sex hormone that fuels sexual interest, arousal and activity, and is also
associated with increased competition and risk-taking.

When skateboarders attempt tricks, they make a split-second
decision about whether to abort the trick or try to land it, based on a mid-air
evaluation of the likelihood of success and on the physical costs that failure
might bring — such as falling flat on their face.

It was that moment the researchers sought to examine,
because it resembles the type of risky decisions that young men make when
behind the steering wheel of a car or when in physical confrontations with each
other. As a group, young males are at the highest risk of early death of any
group in industrialized countries in part because they are the biggest risk-takers.

As the researchers expected, the skateboarders took greater
risks in the presence of the attractive female, even when they knew there was a
greater chance they could crash. Along with this increased risk-taking, the
young men had higher testosterone levels when they performed in front of the
female than when they did their jumps in front of another guy.

"This experiment provides evidence for an effect that
has existed in art, mythology, and literature for thousands of years: Beautiful
women lead men to throw caution to the wind," wrote the authors of the
study, Richard Ronay and William von Hippel, of the University of Queensland in
Australia.

"These findings suggest that, for men, the adaptive
benefits gained by enticing mates
and intimidating rivals may have resulted in evolved hormonal and neurological
mechanisms that facilitated greater risk-taking in the presence of attractive
women," they added.

The results of the research are detailed in the first issue
of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

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